Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all. 

Son and his family and Army Daughter and her family came over for dinner.  Son-in-law was going to cook but instead Army Daughter cooked with the help of daughter-in-law.  Dinner turned out reasonably good.  Son made a cake.  It was a honey orange cake. He was excited because it was his first cake from scratch.  The cake was good, the frosting was horrible.  He was so proud of the frosting that I couldn't give him a suggestion on how to make it better.  Maybe next time.

Son got a job, starts tomorrow.  He's already complaining that it doesn't pay enough.  Excuse me?  You haven't worked for a year, your wife got let go from her job a month ago and you are complaining?  Shut up.  To celebrate his new job he decided to take care of some things that he thinks are in need of repair here at my house.  I'm not sure if he did anything outside or not.  He decided that he needed to hook the TV antenna up to all three TVs.  Right now we have the digital antenna connected to the TV in the living room - no cable or satellite here.  I just hadn't gotten around to moving the antenna to the attic and connecting the wires together for all three TVs.  I figured it would be an easy job.  How could he screw it up?  Oh yeah, it's my son.  He will take any job and make it ten times more difficult, ten times more messy, and ten times more expensive. 

My suggestion, and why listen to me, I'm just old... was that if the satellite TV came into the house on a cable that he should just hook up the antenna to this same cable.  Unhook it from the satellite, hook it to the antenna.  Sounds reasonable.  Except he doesn't work on reason.  He got into the attic and started pulling wires.  Don't pull wires.  You can't pull them up without unhooking them from the wall.  The wires are all hardwired to the little plastic connector at the wall and they are attached to guides in the walls.  It's not like your apartment where it's just got a wire coming out of the wall and running across the room.  No.  He pulled wires.  This meant that he pulled the wires out of the connectors.  Then he complained to me that whoever put the wires in did a lousy job connecting them.  I put the wires in when I helped with the house remodel. 

I was able to reconnect the wire in my bedroom but it's just coming through a big hole in the wall.  It's not connected to the outlet anymore.   In the the family room he tugged on the wire so hard that it's half way up the wall.  This was a sound proofed wall and is full of insulation.  He can't just drop the wire.  He'll have to fish for it and of course he doesn't have the tools.  Then he wanted to pull the wires connected to the plug in the garage and use that since it's got a good connection.  NO!!! Don't touch it.  How about putting a hole in the ceiling in the family room and running the cord right behind the TV?  NO!!!  I don't want the wire hanging in back of the TV.  He took this to mean that it was OK to punch a hole in the ceiling over the bookcase so it wouldn't be as visible.  STOP HELPING!!!!   

They ate dinner and went home.  The TV in the bedroom and family room still aren't hooked up to the antenna.  The living room TV is working great, but then again it was working great when he started.  There's a lot of insulation all over the house.  What a mess.  And he got nothing accomplished other than making a mess in the house, putting a hole in the ceiling, and pulling out the connecting boxes.  At least it's not costing me money.  Just time to clean it all up.  Just what I wanted.   

Note to self: Make sure you have extra connectors, wire, and other electrical and cable items in your storage for when son comes over to help.

The new year is starting off just like it ended.  Should be a good year!